Roxy how do you know your H knows he's not meeting your needs if you don't communicate about it? Is it something he openly says to you? If so, how do you respond? I just find that many times in a marriage (I know my H and I have both been guilty of this) you sort of expect your spouse to read your mind or somehow know what the problem is, when most of the time they are clueless. H and I work hard these days at trying to communicate instead of assuming the other knows, and then resenting them for not doing what we didn't know we should have been doing in the first place. Wasn't always that way by any means. That was a big thing we worked on in MC.

Yes we've talked about it so many times that we don't talk about it anymore.
Yes he openly says it. If anyone asks him, he will admit that he does a shotty job.

I don't respond. I'm not gonna tell him something he already knows.

communication shutting down
I know it all to well.
Time to bring in trained help?

Roxy, I think one can have a one-sided relationship. That doesn't mean it will be healthy. Example: abusive relationships tend to be very one-sided, but a lot of women stay in them for various reasons, despite the obviousness of needing to get out of Dodge.

This happens when romantic love never leads to friendship love, family love, and ultimately, sacrificial love. When the *reason* you get married is purely romantic passion, that love is selfish. It sticks around based on "what can you do for me." When that happens, and the seemingly "natural" connection in the beginning that motivated one to enjoy meeting each other's romantic needs becomes needed maintenance instead of going on automatic pilot, the selfishness of that love works against the relationship. Why should I have to focus on what seemed to happen naturally? I don't want to do any work, I just want to receive what was promised: their love.

Consequently, love based purely on passion eventually crumbles. It creates the one-sided feelings, often from both sides at the same time! Yes,, likely he is feeling the same way about you. Ex: She's so needy and high maintenance. I work all day, come home, and she expects me to work here too, then seems reluctant to have sex with me (so she must not love me). I'm doing all this work and she demands more of me.

It could go on and on. Not saying this is exactly what he is thinking, I would have no way of knowing. Only pointing out how if one marries for romantic love, it will eventually mean the relationship deteriorates and feels one-sided to both, because it is a love based upon selfishness: I like how he makes me feel.

Ironically, the only way to maintain that romantic love long term is to have sacrificial love alongside it. By putting her needs as my priority, and she doing the same, our needs get met on the selfish romantic side as well. But that is because we are willing to think first of the other than ourselves.

I mentioned on the other thread how I had to sacrifice my selfishness of what I felt was important and focus on meeting Gabi's needs. I even did this during the early days of rebuilding when most BSs wouldn't even think of meeting their spouse's needs, because such pain tends to pull one into a defensive posture to avoid getting hurt again. But I was able to separate the affair issues from my own issues.

The interesting thing is now that I've sacrified to meet her needs, because she is doing the same, for the first time in our marriage my own needs are being fully met as I'd hoped they would. That wouldn't have happened if either of us didn't have sacrificial love for each other.

That's why I recommended you both reading His Needs, Her Needs together. Maybe you read it to him if he's not much of a reader. It allows for some good discussions. But that's why it feels one sided to you, because either one or both of you are viewing love as being about what *i* get out of it. What makes *me* feel good. Rather than what can I do to make him or her feel good, feel my love, unconditionally.

But if romantic love continues to be one-sided over a long enough period of time, the love bank gets drained, goes into the negative, and you no longer feel you love each other. So the cycle starts again. You divorce and find a new relationship that meets those needs, or you skip the divorce part, But because it is still all about how that person meets your needs, when that changes as it tends to do without sacrificial attention to it, the love bank gets low, you "fall out of love" with them, and you find someone new.

we'll read it

OK, my case is not typical in that I don't think that most men are abusers, like my X. It took me twenty-two years, for lack of a better word, to break. Divorced him and am now single.